ASCILITE NEWS

Announcing Marita Cheng as ASCILITE 2017 Keynote

The ASCILITE 2017 organizing committee is beyond excited to announce Robogals founder, 2012 Young Australian of the Year, and entrepreneur Marita Cheng has accepted our invitation to be a keynote speaker at ASCILITE 2017 in Toowoomba.

Marita is a technology entrepreneur, who uses her considerable talents to improve lives and make change happen. Marita first came to prominence as the founder of Robogals while still a university student. Marita led fellow engineering students on a campaign to bring robotics to girls in high schools. Robogals is now an international enterprise, having taught more than 70,000 girls across 11 countries. Marita now develops technologies including “telepresence” robots and smart phone apps that can assist a range of people from children in hospital to the elderly, and people with disabilities, to participate in education, work or social activities. She is also heavily involved in the world of tech start-ups through her work with RMIT, and she is on both the Victorian State Innovation Expert Panel and the Clinton Health Access Initiative’s Tech Advisory Board.

Marita’s keynote will address the theme of “Robotics in the Future of Work”.

Explore the robots of tomorrow and how AI will shape our future in ways greater than we can imagine today. From machines that can see for us, process data accurately and at a greater speed than humans, and robots that get the job done and don’t answer back. There is much to think about and prepare for as we create the future of work, but most importantly – what we can do to educate and equip our graduates for this future.

You can read more about Marita on the conference website Keynote Speakers page here.

We’re looking forward to glimpsing the future through the eyes of Marita – a truly inspirational keynote speaker. Register now for ASCILITE 2017 for your opportunity to hear from Marita Cheng.

ASCILITE Announces Student Bursary Award Winners

ASCILITE is pleased to announce the winners of the new Student Bursary Award for full-time PhD/EdD or equivalent students. The three recipients of the award this year are:

Tran Le Nghi Tran, University of Queensland

Paul Wiseman, University of Melbourne

Malcolm Burt, Queensland University of Technology

The award recipients now have up to $1,000 to put towards their attendance at the ASCILITE 2017 conference in the form of a complimentary student registration, up to 3 nights accommodation and assistance with travel costs.

Award submissions comprised a 3 – 5 minute video that demonstrated how well the applicant made use of educational technologies and was able to communicate effectively through the technology by explaining why he or she should receive the bursary. The winning submissions are available for viewing on the ASCILITE website here.

Webinar recording: A Review of Five Years of Research & Implementation aligning Learning Design with Learning Analytics at the Open University (UK)

On 20 September, Professor of Learning Analytics, Bart Rienties from the Institute of Educational Technology at the Open University UK presented a webinar on behalf of the Learning Analytics SIG.

The Open University UK has been one of few institutions that have explicitly and systematically captured the designs for learning at a large scale. By applying advanced analytical techniques on large and fine-grained datasets, we have been unpacking the complexity of instructional practices, as well as providing empirical evidence of how learning designs influence student behaviour, satisfaction, and performance. This seminar will discuss the implementation of learning design at the OU in the last 5 years, and reviews empirical evidence from several studies that have linked learning design with learning analytics. Recommendations are put forward to support future adoptions of the learning design approach, and potential research trajectories.

You’ll find the recording of this session here. You’ll also find two earlier LA-SIG webinars presented during 2017 on the LA-SIG website:

“Responsible Learning Analytics: A Tentative Proposal” prsented by Paul Prinsloo, Research Professor in Open and Distance Learning (ODL) in the College of Economic and Management Sciences, University of South Africa (Unisa).

Our latest and most interesting blog post has been contributed by A/Prof Matt Bower, Department of Educational Studies at Macquarie University.

In his post, Matt posits that the Learning Design field has expended considerable effort to create educational design models and tools that help teachers to effectively integrate technology into their teaching. Most of these initiatives are based to some extent on the underlying idea of ‘pedagogical patterns’ (Goodyear, 2005) – that if we can capture and share abstractions of designs and design processes then we can help to improve teacher practice. The problem is that, while learning design models and tools have made highly valuable conceptual contributions to the Education field, they have had limited impact on practice.

Read the full post here and while you’re there, subscribe to our regular stream of thought provoking posts.

Matt is kindly offering ASCILITE members a 30% discount on his new book, “Design of Technology-Enhanced Learning – Integrating Research and Practice ” so if you are interested, please email Matt.

Reminder: 2017 ASCILITE Awards Open for Nominations

Nominations for the ASCILITE 2017 Awards close on Monday 2 October 2017 which is rapidly approaching so now is a good time to prepare your nominations! ASCILITE is accepting nominations in three award categories for the 2017 awards. The three categories are:

OTHER NEWS

6th Annual Blended Learning Conference with Discount for ASCILITE members

What’s Next for Blended Learning?

Being able to create and maintain a blended learning environment is crucial for universities if they want to attract, engage and retain students. At a time of reduced public funding, educators need to use existing resources more efficiently and align learning design with student outcomes.

Ahead of the 6th Annual Blended Learning 2017 conference, the BL2017 team caught up with Monash University, the University of Sydney, and Charles Sturt University to find out how they are using blended learning methods to design student-centric learning and to discover what lessons these institutions have learned.

The result is a report that looks into how three universities are evolving blended learning to drive student engagement and learning outcomes. You can read “What’s Next for Blended Learning? to find-out the details and if you would like further information about Australia’s longest running Blended Learning Conference, simply download the event guide or visit the website here .

To register and save an additional 10% off the price of attending (use VIP Code: ascilite17) to call (02) 9229-1000 or book online here<

Australian Learning Analytics Summer Institute (ALASI), 30 Nov 2017

The organizers of ALASI 2017 are pleased to invite you and your institution to this year’s ALASI event to be held in Brisbane, Queensland from Thursday, 30 November to Friday 1 December 2017 at the University of Queensland, St Lucia.

The Learning Analytics Summer Institutes (LASIs) are international community and discipline building events created by the Society for Learning Analytics Research (SoLAR). ALASI is the main forum in Australia for the exchange of knowledge, innovation, and experiences in the area of Learning Analytics. The event offers a great opportunity to learn about analytics in education, showcase your activities and benchmark results through exposure to the thinking, experiences and feedback of other practitioners and researchers in the field.

Call for Submissions

Due to many requests the deadline for submissions has been extended, so if you haven’t done so, you are invited to make a submission before Friday, 6 October 2017. Suggested topics include:

Practical impacts and evaluation of learning analytics on student learning

Engagement with students, academics and university communities in learning analytics projects and research

Personalised and adaptive learning

Feedback and decision-support systems

Operationalising learning analytics initiatives

Registration details and additional information is available on the ALASI2017 website or email us if you have questions.

This event has been scheduled to align with the ASCILITE 2017 Conference held on Monday 4 – Wednesday 6 December 2017 in Toowoomba, Queensland.

FLANZ, the cornerstone organisation of New Zealand’s flexible learning community, is looking to breath new life into technology enabled learning innovation in New Zealand.

FLANZ President, Ralph Springett, says, “FLANZ is in a great position to leverage its role as an advocate with a recent name change, the opening of the FLANZ awards for original or innovative projects, and preparation for the 2018 National Conference: From Inception to Infinity.”

“The 2018 conference will tackle issues confronting every school and tertiary institution in New Zealand,” says Mr Springett. “It includes topics like design and innovation, equity and flexibility, and new tools for learning.”

Each FLANZ conference (held every two years) includes the presentation of the FLANZ Award recognising an individual or organisation for advancing understanding of best practice in e-learning, distance, open and flexible learning in New Zealand, together with awards given for best journal paper, refereed paper, postgraduate paper and conference poster.

The 2016 conference also allowed discussion and agreement of a name change from Distance Education (DEANZ) to Flexible Learning (FLANZ) to reflect the direction of technology enabled learning.

Applications are now open for the 2018 FLANZ awards, which include postgraduate student scholarships. FLANZ awards applications can be made through the 2018 FLANZ conference website: The 2018 FLANZ conference will be held in Palmerston North 9 April to 11 April 2018.